Unlikely Story
by KayLeFay
Summary: All Ezra Fell wants is some intellectual property contracts. Anthony J. Crowley is more interested in saving the world. Now if only the buildings would stop walking away, they might actually accomplish something. AU Steampunk, now with a side of slash!
1. Chapter 1

The air hung like wet curtains over London as the young man made his way through the streets. Moving a bit too fast to qualify as walking, but just under the requisite speed for running, he gave off the air of someone unsure as to whether or not his destination was a place he was willing to go. The street wasn't making it any easier for him to make up his mind. Carriages kept missing him at alarming speeds. He stepped into the deep center of puddles so frequently and with such accuracy that it was only the expression on his face which hinted that it was not indeed his intention. The air displaced by a passing dirigible ruffled his hair in a manner that would have suited him if he were the kind of man to whose hair a slight breeze would do wonders. He wasn't. That was all right. He had many other fine qualities.

Written in crab-apple handwriting on the small card in his hand was an address that was bound to be on this corner, or maybe the next. Just as long as it wasn't one of those blasted offices that moved around every time he thought he'd found it. In these cases, the man was never quite sure if it the fault lay with the buildings themselves, or with his own colorful sense of direction. This was the trouble, he thought, with those new mechanical legs. One likes to know where one stands in terms of ineptitude, and adding legs to things that rightly shouldn't have so much as a pulse was mucking things up.

He'd carefully given up hope three separate times before he found himself on the correct doorstep. A quick glance to the foundations having assured him as to the distinct lack of legs of any kind, he let himself into the building.

The door, which had been hard to open, had no such reservations about flying shut. The noise inspired the young man to jetée into the foyer, startling into slightly better posture the two men whom he now saw had been lurking surreptitiously in the background.

"Hello," said the young man, after a moment. "Would you by chance be Misters Damien Hastur and Oliver Ligur?"

The taller of the two others grunted, which could've been taken either way, really, but the young man brightened anyway. "I'm here to see—" here he checked his card, "a Mister Anthony Crowley? My name's Ezra Fell."


	2. Chapter 2

The shorter man, who had sunk back into first-class lurking form during the previous exchange, let out a sound which Mr. Fell took to be a laugh but was rather more comparable to the bark of a slightly rusty dog. "Him," choked the man, "whaddya wanna see him for, then? Got something that needs to be buggered up, is that it?"

Mr. Fell crinkled his nondescript brows. "Well, er…that's not _quite_ what I was here about," he explained, before earnestly adding, "though I'm sure he's an excellent, er, buggerer."

"No need to be cheeky," snarled the taller man, "he's just downstairs, isn't he? Working on his…whatsit."

"We don't get involved," sighed the shorter one, by way of explanation. He waved his stout little hand vaguely towards the other side of the room, where a set of stairs spiraled down into the gloomy nethers. The visitor shifted, running his hands down the sides of his coat. He cleared his throat. "Go on, then," said the tall man, "It's just over there."

"We don't want you getting lost," said the shorter one in a stage-whisper, with a smile suggesting that nothing would please him better.

"Right," said Mr. Fell, before walking the length of the room and beginning his careful descent.

"So," said the taller one when he was sure the visitor was out of earshot, "d'you think…"

"Him?" said the short man, "Can't be. You saw what he was wearing."

"I don't actually remember—"

"Exactly. S'not the right one."

They settled back into themselves and waited.

Ezra was turning the corner, feet soaking into the worryingly brown spongy carpet, when he felt it necessary to realize that a body in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. The source of this realization was currently lying on top of him.

"Oh, hi," said the outside force.

The man had good cheekbones, thought Ezra as he tried to sit up. Good cheekbones and dark hair so different from his own depressingly natural blonde. "Hello," he returned shakily, "I'm looking for someone. Might you be you, er, I mean, him?"

The fellow smiled as he stood up, extending a hand to help Ezra to his feet. Ezra, for his part, frowned slightly and ignored him, choosing instead the circuitous path of rocking himself into an upright position. "I don't know who you're looking for, but I'm Anthony Crowley."

"Of course you are," Ezra muttered.

"I assume you've met Hastur and Ligur," said Mr. Crowley, "unless you came in here through the sewer tunnels."

"What? Yes, I think I have. Met them, that is."

"Then you must be here to see me."

Mr. Crowley led him down the hall, towards a door marked 'Augustus Ferkle." A flick of his slender hand against what appeared to be a latch in the doorknob, and the sign retracted. New letters formed, which proclaimed the office within to be that of "Anthony J. Crowley, Esq."

"Creditors," explained Crowley.

"How did you—"

"The nameplate? Just something I did in my spare time," said the dark-haired man, with perhaps a bit more pride than is considered proper.

"How do you follow," asked Ezra.

"Sorry?"

"How do you know that I was here to see you?"

Crowley smirked. "Besides those two goons upstairs, there's only me…well, me and Mr. Bentley."

"Who's Mr.—" started Ezra, but then the door was opening and instead he found himself groaning.

Legs.

Every surface in the room was covered with mechanical legs. Legs of all different sizes, some moving, some as still as hunted foxes. And in the center of the room, a carriage so black it was revelatory, with eight silver legs protruding from its middle.

"I was told…" Ezra spluttered.

"What? That I was a lawyer? You were told right."

"You were told right," mused Ezra, "Is that even grammatically correct? The syntax is a bit—"

"I have a lot of hobbies," Crowley snapped.

The silence that then fell between them was not so much silent as it was a thicket of metallic clicking. After a moment, Crowley shook his head and cleared the table of its nonhuman inhabitants, sending them clattering to the floor. Some of them, Ezra was puzzled to see, looked a bit rattled, which was not, as far as he knew, a common state of affairs for pairs of metallic legs.

"They'll be fine," sighed Crowley, "you might as well sit down."

"You're not going to kick me out?"

Crowley looked confused. "Why would I do that?"

"I'm not sure," admitted Ezra. The truth was, simply being in this room was giving him such a turn he wouldn't have been able to leave of his own accord.

"I don't even have a name to kick you out by."

Ezra, resisting the urge to correct the mislaid preposition, said, "Ezra Fell. Is my name. Er."

"Right," said Crowley, "And why are you here, Ezra Fell?"

"I heard you specialize in intellectual property. I would like to register a trademark."

"All right," Crowley said, leaning back in his chair, "What's the basic idea?"

Ezra paused. "It's a bit difficult to explain."

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

"Well," said Ezra, "it's about something called the Ineffable Plan."


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley's first thought was that the phrase sounded haughtier than his estranged uncle Gabriel, and a good deal less interesting, besides. His second thought came to him unbidden. He knew, suddenly and without a doubt, that if Fell simply wrote the words 'Ineffable Plan' on a piece of parchment and perhaps added a little squiggle for emphasis, it would fetch a most satisfactory price on the auction block.

He shook off the odd premonition with a shrug that managed to appear both careful and careless. He said, "Ineffable."

"Yes," Ezra confirmed.

"Doesn't that mean impossible to explain?"

"Nearly."

"Nearly impossible to explain? Fantastic."

"No," Ezra clarified, almost shyly, "nearly as in that's _nearly_ what it means."

Crowley, sensing the seeds of a long conversation, turned to the nearest mechanical leg—a silver model with three joints and a clawed foot, approx. two foot three in length—and began to adjust its wire ligaments. "I see," he said, "and what is the exact meaning, Fell?"

"I really would prefer you call me by my first name, Mr. Crowley."

"I can't help but notice you're not offering me the same…courtesy."

"Forgive me, er, Anthony. I would prefer it if you called me Ezra."

"I wouldn't," smirked Crowley, "vaguely poufy, isn't it?"

Ezra turned an enchantingly coral pink at the ears. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Crowley?"

"Just Crowley," said Crowley.

He awaited the fury, but Ezra's brain hadn't quite caught up to his mouth, which was hanging slightly open and giving him a singular resemblance to a puzzled wild salmon. Before Ezra had a chance to realize exactly what had happened, Crowley had moved on. "What does it mean, then?"

Ezra started. "What does what mean?"

"Ineffable," said Crowley, very nearly adding 'you dolt.'

"Something is considered ineffable if it is impossible to describe in words."

"That's what I _said_."

"No, you said 'nearly impossible to explain.' Furthermore, you mentioned nothing about words."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"_Why_ is it impossible to describe in words?"

"Because," Ezra explained, "it is considered sacred."

Crowley found that he was grateful for not having recently ingested any hot beverages. Nevertheless, he was choking.

"Mister, rather, Crowley, is everything alright?"

Ignoring his urge to kick this man and whatever Godly business he had out of his office and straight into the sewer tunnels, Crowley managed to breathe again and to organize his face. "You've been talking to the man upstairs," he said, rather more sullenly than intended.

Ezra bit his lip. "Mr. Ligur? Or perhaps you mean Mr. Hastur? I'm still not really sure—"

"I was using what we in the English-speaking world call an idiom."

"For what purpose?"

"To refer to God, you absolute ass!"

Ezra looked wounded. "Well, I found it rather oblique. And I'm not talking to God. Not directly."

"Right," said Crowley, who was beginning to feel, if possible, even more uneasy with the entire situation.

"Right," echoed Ezra. He crossed his arms and waited for Crowley to speak.

"You still haven't told me exactly what it is you want to do," Crowley sighed.

Ezra opened and closed his mouth several times before any sound decided it was time to come out. "Haven't I? Goodness. Well. The Ineffable Plan is _the _plan. For the universe, and what is not the universe. It _cannot_ be questioned. This is vital."

Crowley was getting stomach cramps. "And… you want me to…"

Ezra smiled, a simple muscular arrangement that gave him an uncharacteristically distinct look. It was a smile that people would notice. "Just like I said before. I want to register a trademark on the Ineffable Plan. And make it a good one."

"A…good one?" Crowley nearly laughed.

"Yes," said Ezra, "It's one idea I'd prefer not be allowed to float around."

Crowley blinked as Ezra stood up, handed him a calling card, and gracefully took his leave.


	4. Chapter 4

Gabriel Engelbert wasn't, strictly speaking, a people person. Decades of living alone had long since eroded any societal niceties that might have endeared him to his fellow man, though it may be said that Gabriel possessed a disposition so naturally dull that it convinced all of his—admittedly small—acquaintance that he wasn't, strictly speaking, a person at all, 'people' or otherwise.

It was therefore with some trepidation that he rose from his seamy armchair to answer the door. The bell had rung twice in the past three days, after a visitor-free stretch of six years and two months. Logically, thought Gabriel—who could think no other way even if he wanted to—it could only be the same man who had called on him earlier. And there wasn't a people person in the world who would have happily invited this visitor in for tea.

"Mr. Hastur," Gabriel said.

The tall man slunk into the flat. Gabriel rather wished he wouldn't, the neighbors were watching, and besides, all that lurking was sure to put him off his supper. "Let me cut to the chase," Gabriel said.

It's not that he was overly fond of using clichés, but rather that he couldn't stretch his brain beyond the limits of the common vernacular. "Did he show up or not?"

Mr. Hastur emitted a short and stocky sort of grunt. "Nah," he admitted.

Gabriel shook his head. Disappointment was a vaguely new emotion. He didn't like it. "Did _anyone _show up?"

"Some poofter."

So much for specificity, Gabriel thought. "Did you get a name?"

"It wasn't him."

"Why was he there?"

"Wanted to see your bleedin' nephew, didn't he?"

Gabriel found that he was grateful for not having recently ingested any hot beverages, a thought that, unbeknownst to him, was shared by his nephew Anthony several hours prior. "And you didn't get a name? How many times do I have to tell you"—Gabriel had only told him once, but he liked the way it sounded—"if anyone comes to that stupid law firm of yours specifically seeking Anthony, it's going to be _him_."

Mr. Hastur blinked dully. "That was him? Didn't _look _like him."

"And you've seen him, I suppose."

"Well…not as such, no. But you shoulda seen what this bugger was _wearin_'."

Gabriel sighed. "What did he look like?"

Mr. Hastur looked happy to be asked about such an important topic. "He looked…forgive me for saying so, sir, but he looked a bit like you."

"Indeed?"

Mr. Hastur nodded. "Around the eyes."

Gabriel, not forgetting the scorn displayed in Mr. Hastur's voice when describing this particular 'bugger', said, "How so?"

Mr. Hastur suddenly realized the dangerous potential of such a comparison. "He…has eyes," he said.

Sometimes, Gabriel was sorry that he wasn't hard of hearing. "Just make sure he signs it," he said, "we can't start without him, after all."


	5. Chapter 5

Just as Ezra was about to take a shortcut through an alleyway, the fat red brick building to his right stepped casually around him and blocked the entrance. Ezra sighed and continued his way along the narrow city street, upping his stepping-into-puddles quotient by about five, or six if one were to count the result of the bicycle accident that was due to happen in the next five seconds.

There. Rounding the corner, the slight young woman on the penny-farthing bicycle swerved into the path of a nearby puddle, in the expectation that the man walking towards her would leap out of the way. Ezra, for his part, frantically leapt into the puddle, in the expectation that the woman would steer her contraption around him. Two seconds later, Ezra had a rather intimate knowledge of his particular patch of stagnant water, and the woman lay several feet away at the base of a hedge.

Though Ezra would like to have said that he leapt up at once to see if the lady had sustained any trauma, in truth he barely managed to push himself into a sitting position before standing and walking towards her at a pace acceptable only in toddlers, the elderly, and a few of the more decrepit tenements downtown. "Are you alright, miss?"

The woman in question hastily rearranged the folds of burgundy silk that comprised the bottom half of her gown. This resulted in neither covering nor revealing any bodily appendages, but in simply shifting one lump of fabric into another. The bustle, for its part, stuck out shamefacedly into the roots of the bush behind her. "Oh, it's you," she said, with seeming relief.

His arms, halfway stretched out in her direction, paused in their efforts. "I'm sorry?"

She didn't say anything for a moment, which was bad, and then giggled, which was worse. She didn't seem the type to giggle, so it fell rather flat. "My mistake. You see, I was expecting for this—I mean, I…I thought you were someone else."

"Right," said Ezra, before fully extending his hands to help her up.

"At least the bicycle's okay," sighed the woman as she got to her feet.

Ezra looked at the contraption, which had burrowed into the hedge like an ostrich, handlebars first. It didn't seem to have as much as a scrape, though goodness knows how the lady could have assessed that in her current position.

"So am I," grumbled Ezra.

"Oh! Forgive me. You're alright, aren't you?"

"Indeed, madam."

She grabbed him by the shoulders, as though to steady herself, but her moss-colored eyes were focused on him as though he were a particularly difficult arithmetic problem.

"Would you care for some assistance with that…er…two-wheeled carriage you've got there?"

Having successfully isolated the variable x, the woman smiled. The Book was never wrong. She said,"He'll call on you this Thursday."

Ezra felt like all the blood in his system had decided to congregate in his pinky toes. The woman wrenched her bicycle out from its prison of a hedge and mounted it with practiced grace. As she cycled away, she called "be careful what you sign!" 

Anywhere from three minutes to three hours later, Ezra found himself in his flat and poured himself a stiff drink.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: Sorry for the wait! This update is nice and long, and represents a slight development in tone for the piece. It even hints at getting a teeny bit angsty—I swear, I couldn't help it! This stuff writes itself! Let me know what you think. Thank you all!

Chapter 6

The knock on the door was all the louder because Ezra had been expecting it. "Your knocker has no personality," said Crowley by way of greeting.

Ezra blushed inadvertently. "I'm sorry?"

"Door knocker," Crowley grinned, "it doesn't even talk."

Ezra couldn't help but notice that the man looked about as out of place in his house as a lawyer in a middle-class living room, which was, of course, exactly the case. And it was more than that. Crowley's trousers and shirt were far too tailored, a watch—likely his own design, Ezra thought—hanging from a vest pocket just so. A pair of silver-framed goggles adorned the top of his head, the leather strap pinning a fringe of dark hair to those cheekbones. Ezra turned before Crowley could catch him looking.

"I—"

"Didn't think I would come," Crowley interrupted, "did you?"

"Was going to ask if yours does."

"What?"

"Your door knocker," Ezra said.

"What about it?"

"Does it talk?"

Crowley frowned. Ezra noticed he had dimples. "You've been there, you tell me."

"I meant at your home."

"Oh," said Crowley.

Ezra knew he'd crossed a line. One doesn't ask one's lawyer—one's potential lawyer—personal questions. But then Crowley laughed. "It talks," he said, "more than yours does."

That didn't quite answer Ezra's question in the detail he'd been expecting, but that's not what Crowley had come to discuss, or at least that's what he assumed. "Tea," Ezra said.

"Is that an offer?"

"More of a question," Ezra clarified.

Crowley gave him a look then that was both casual and focused, perhaps intended not to startle. It was also more than a little predatory.

"It's copyright you want," he said, "not a trademark."

Ezra felt himself closing out everything unrelated to the case. It was the mental equivalent of tunnel vision. "But the name," Ezra countered, "that's what I want protected."

"And you care nothing for the protection under which your intellectual property might benefit, I supposed?"

"Copyright," Ezra mused.

"Protects the name _and_ the idea."

Ezra wanted to joke that it was a two-for-one deal, but stopped himself. His twenty-six years on this earth had thus far not seen fit to equip him with a reliable humor detector, and he wasn't about to test it again, not after that incident with the ducks. Instead, he said, "Why are you here?"

Crowley said, "You gave me your card."

"Yes, after you nearly choked on your own throat."

Crowley looked momentarily puzzled. "Oh, _that_. Happens to the best of us."

Ezra tried, and failed, to raise an eyebrow, but the resulting look of fiery concentration seemed to work on Crowley.

"Okay, okay," he admitted, "I don't like any of it."

Ezra knew that it was not polite to ask, so he continued to stare, which felt _less_ impolite. Crowley appeared to be thinking, and Ezra knew he was about to speak. He had the feeling that this process usually went the other way around.

"The…Plan," Crowley said, "I don't want it floating around any more than you do."

Crowley had started off at the writing desk. It had taken him four cups of tea to scribble out a baker's dozen of pages before sprawling out on the sofa. Another two cups—which may have contained slightly more whiskey than tea, but only _just_—and he was on the floor, small heaps of discarded paper springing up around him like shrubbery.

Ezra had avoided so much as looking at the whiskey. He knew that what would calm him down enough to be truly friendly would also give him the reflexes of a particularly musty sloth, and he couldn't afford to do anything stupid. Besides, watching Crowley work was a reward in itself. To Ezra's astonishment, the alcohol that was even now buzzing through the lawyer's veins seemed to be no detriment to his progress. On the contrary, since his last drink, Crowley had risen to a state of concentration that was almost rabid in its intensity. His eyes, flitting across the paper at a speed to match his pen, flickered in the soft light of kerosene. Ezra thought wildly that maybe if he were very quiet, he'd be able to hear Crowley buzzing with the energy of an electrical storm.

Crowley, Ezra surmised, likely inhabited a similar state of fanaticism in his workshop, working on one of the legs, or on that carriage of his. Mr. Bentley, he'd called it. Ezra caught his own reflection in Crowley's goggles and looked away, knowing that it could only hint at the impeccable plainness of his own features.

The lawyer had just spoken.

Ezra said, "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I said, it's finished if you'd like to read it."

Crowley handed him the papers. Two sentences in, Ezra said, "I'm not sure I understand a word you've written here."

Crowley grinned. "That's the point."

"What?"

"It's why I write contracts. Drives people absolutely bonkers."

Ezra stared. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Have you ever _seen_ someone try to understand contract law? Or better yet, _tort _law?"

"I can't see myself," said Ezra, still avoiding his reflection, "but I'm sure it's all very amusing to you."

"Watching people squabble bitterly over a system their ancestors invented? It's poetic."

"That's all very well for you," said Ezra, "but I still can't read it."

"Odd," smiled Crowley, "you seem like the bookish type."

"Books are different. They have...themes. And characters. And a plot. Excepting books of criticism, of course, but those are still organized."

"This is organized," said Crowley, with typically lawyerly confidence, "You just have to read through the bullshit."


	7. Chapter 7

This time, Mr. Ligur was with him. Though Gabriel greeted the pair with all the good cheer expected from a fried clam, he understood what had to be done. If enduring the machinations of a couple of low-class lurkers was part of the Plan, so be it. It was, he mused, what it was. That was the bottom line.

He turned to his guests. "I don't think we need to incentivize any further, gentlemen."

Gabriel's vocabulary seemed to have crawled out of one of the duller varieties of coffee mugs one finds nowadays at corporate meetings, and Messrs. Hastur and Ligur nodded in what might have passed for agreement if they hadn't managed to bugger up the whole tilting-the-head-downward business.

Rightly unconvinced, Gabriel said, "He is, I trust, aware of the plan?"

Hastur spoke up, an odd behavior to witness considering that he modeled an inverse correlation between level of slouch and loudness of tone. "The plan, sir? Or d'you mean the Plan?"

Gabriel, of course, couldn't see the capital letter that Hastur would've probably forgotten to add had he written his question down, but he could hear it. The Plan had a way of elongating itself in one's mind, of taking up space even as it offered, in name, almost no useful information about itself.

He answered, "The plan addressing the Plan."

"Of course," said Ligur.

"Everything is ready," Hastur confirmed, "he knows what to do."

Gabriel nearly smiled. Though he'd be hard-pressed to admit it, he could imagine himself one day becoming nostalgic for this world. He comforted himself with the thought that this would be impossible, seeing as the concept of nostalgia, along with everything else, would quite shortly no longer exist.

He said, "Let's get this show on the road."


	8. Chapter 8

Ezra flipped the last sheet of paper on its back, squinting suspiciously. "That's it?"

"Don't sound so disappointed," Crowley said.

Ezra had convinced Crowley to occupy the chair opposite him at the small dining table. The pile of newly-lawyered papers sat squarely in the middle, facedown, the top section drifting a bit in Ezra's direction owing to its having just been read. Against his better judgment, Ezra found himself warming to the feeling of parchment, of ink, of the raised, Braille-like indentations left by Crowley's pen as it scattered across the page.

"And how much is filler?"

"That depends on what you mean by filler," explained Crowley, "there's the type of filler in which I expound on the exact and explicit nature of the corollaries to the general property-rights agreement, and then there's the type where I conjugate fifty irregular Latin verbs in the pluperfect tense."

Ezra shook his head as he recalled the veritable army of verbs that had conquered pages twenty-four through thirty. "Was that strictly necessary?"

"First line of defense," said Crowley, "discourages people from reading the bloody thing in the first place."

Ezra knew that anyone who reasoned like Crowley should be, by default, completely mad. Somehow, the fact that it was Crowley doing the reasoning was enough to alleviate his concerns. The man had unorthodox methods, to be sure, but there was also a grounded aspect to his person. He possessed the grace and agility to navigate the carefully stitched seam between his mind and the rest of the world, and to look good doing it, besides.

"So this," Ezra waved his hands in the direction of the papers, "entitles me to full and complete intellectual property rights—"

"—consistent with all the privileges and duties established therein," Crowley finished.

Ezra stared at the pile, daring it to make itself intelligible. He'd been forced, more or less, to rely on Crowley's interpretation of the documents. It's not that he didn't trust Crowley, but he had become accustomed to engaging in relationships with written materials that yielded a high level of reciprocity on both sides.

Neither of them had talked about the Plan in any detail more than what was strictly necessary in writing the contract. Ezra, unsure as to exactly why the Plan so perturbed Crowley, decided to broach a subject only a bit less taboo. "How much are you expecting to be paid, Mr. Crowley?"

The latter looked up from the small doodle he'd been composing around the two freckles on his right hand and said, "It's Crowley."

"There's a lot I can offer you," said Ezra.

Crowley looked around the room, at the bookcase so overflowing with manuscripts that it permanently listed in a southerly direction, at the saggy couch, and at Ezra himself. He snorted, and poured himself another cup of whiskey.

"You haven't signed it yet," said Crowley.

He tasted the cup of whiskey, winced slightly, and added a shot of tea. "You would prefer to wait," Ezra inferred.

"Just to be clear," Crowley said, "we _are _talking about a financial transaction here?"

"Of course," said Ezra.

Crowley grinned into the ensuing silence like a particularly amused coyote. Ezra, who until that moment had remained blissfully unaware as to the existence of hair on the back of his neck, felt it stand up. He grasped at one of the two main thoughts floating in the vicinity of his consciousness. "What's wrong with God?"

Ezra could practically see the man's throat close up. "Wrong," Crowley spluttered, "there's nothing _wrong_ with him. That's the point."

"Forgive me," Ezra said, "but the reaction of your immune system says otherwise."

Crowley frowned. "You going to sign this contract, or what?"

"Well—"

"Look. I wrote you a contract more airtight than a mechanical octopus. My personal…issues have no bearing on my ability to understand intellectual property law. Now, I've completed my part of our agreement. Unless you have any," here he glared, "_legitimate_ objections to what I have drawn up for you here, I suggest you sign right away so we can forget about all this and you can get what you've wanted ever since I arrived this afternoon."

Ezra felt his ears getting hot. He managed a squeaky "Excuse me?"

Crowley pushed the half-empty whiskey bottle across the table. "A good, stiff drink."

The contract, now signed and dated, had been carefully put aside so the two men could get on with more important things—the business of getting good and utterly smashed. Crowley had consumed more alcohol than Ezra had thought possible while still remaining on his feet, though truth be told, Ezra had left the thinking process behind two and a half drinks ago.

"mmm," slurred Ezra, "whawusisayin?"

Crowley emitted a sound which may or may not have been a giggle. "you…you…" he raised a hand to emphasize his lack of a point, "ducks. 'swhat you said."

Ezra felt himself laughing, which was odd, since he hadn't found the duck incident funny at the time. "flew," he swept his hand across the desk, sending the—fortunately empty—bottle to its final resting place, in pieces on the wood floor.

"Needa siddown," opined Crowley, who ambled over to what passed for a sofa.

Ezra placed his hands on the table to leverage him into a standing position and subsequently attempted to follow his lawyer to said sofa. This action, was, of course, doomed from the start, Ezra's foot catching on the leg of the table. The only thing stopping him from landing, sprawled, on the floor was a fortuitous extra step he had taken before the initial stumble, the force of which propelled him directly onto Crowley's lap.

"Mmsorry," said Ezra, trying and failing to adopt the solemn tone he felt was necessary in the event of such a transgression. He then attempted to puzzle out which of the four legs in the vicinity belonged to him. "S'mine," said Crowley, as his kneecap collided with Ezra's palm.

Ezra's reflection in Crowley's goggles looked almost abominably happy. His hair, usually so flat as to disappear into the untended bits of one's peripherals, was mussed up just so, and his eyes had accomplished a respectably solid shade of blue. Then, he couldn't see himself because Crowley had tilted his head just so and was looking at him with the quietest question of curiosity and Ezra thought that maybe they were sober, and he reached out and traced the sharp line of Crowley's cheekbone with a steady hand.

Crowley said, "Fell, I…"

But he couldn't say any more because Ezra was there, and he was soft and he tasted like cedar wood and India ink. And Ezra pulled him down almost savagely, and nipped the skin under his collarbone and it was quite a while before either of them spoke again.


	9. Chapter 9

Ezra opened his eyes to soft skin and he grinned into Crowley's neck. The latter grumbled into the sleepy sunlight, and Ezra knew that for all the man's steadfastness in the face of drink, his tolerance for the stuff was not infinitely merciful. Ezra tested his vocal chords. "Did you sleep well?"

"Let's see," said Crowley, "my shoulders are cutting into your wooden floor and you've been on top of me for the last six hours."

Ezra stretched, and propped himself onto his forearms like a rather genial sphinx. "But surely we've slept no longer than—oh. I see what you're saying."

Ezra knew that he had long outstripped the social pretenses that would oblige him to be embarrassed at this, but he blushed nevertheless. Crowley pulled him down for a kiss, after which Ezra nuzzled contentedly back into the spot between Crowley's chin and clavicle. They lay like that for several minutes, Ezra suddenly remembering that there was a smattering of glass bottle fragments on the floor next to the table, and deciding just as suddenly to do nothing about it at present. His eyes caught a metallic glint on the arm of the couch just above them, and he snaked one arm up the side and grasped Crowley's watch.

"You made this?"

As if in answer, the watch emitted a whirring sound and four slender metallic legs popped out of tiny slots in the mechanism. The sliver of metal covering the face of the timepiece split into two parts that curved outwards from the watch, turning it into a large golden beetle. The face was covered not with numbers, but in a sort of grid. Ezra peered with interest at the hands, one of which appeared proud to be pointing at a section of the grid labeled _Get Up, You Lazy Bastard_.

Crowley turned his head to peer at the watch. "Must be past seven."

Ezra squinted at it more closely. "What's this one for?"

He pointed to a part of the grid that said, simply, _Too Late_. A hand was pointing in its general direction, but gave the impression that it didn't like to. "That's how they tell time where I grew up," Crowley said.

The intonation behind his explanation was light-hearted, but Crowley's eyes darkened momentarily. "Does it always point there?"

"More or less," mumbled Crowley.

"Strict family," said Ezra, entangling his fingers in Crowley's hair.

"Like hell," said Crowley.

Ezra was kissing a trail up Crowley's chest when he felt the lawyer freeze. "Watch," Crowley intoned.

"What am I watching?"

Crowley grabbed Ezra's hand, extracting the watch from the clutch of surprised fingers. One look at it seemed to confirm whatever thought held him in its grasp and settled into residency on his face. "Get dressed," he said.

"Is something the matter?"

"We're leaving."

Ezra, until now accustomed to dipping into his burgeoning reserves of politeness to demand reasonable explanations, realized that there probably wasn't one and so went to pull on his trousers.

Crowley took him by the hand as he was still buttoning his shirt and dragged him out of the flat. Ezra caught a glimpse of the watch in the hazy daylight.

A third hand, just minutes before safely pointing to _All is Well_ had moved a block to the right.

_Apocalypse, Now_.


	10. Chapter 10

Ezra was finding it difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that the sky aligned with the state of the world as explained by Crowley's watch. True, it had turned a rather odd and rainy sort of purple, but this could have less to do with the coming apocalypse and more to do with the fact that this was London.

The gaslights around them ignited in the drooping fog. Crowley, who was dragging Ezra past a row of houses that stood eagerly at attention, glared at a small wooden building that was blocking the intersection until it took a terrified step back. "Of course they would listen to you," Ezra complained.

"Why shouldn't they? I designed them."

Ezra groaned. Of course he had. "Because it drives people bonkers," he guessed.

"Exactly," Crowley said, pulling Ezra through a hatch in the ground that he hadn't even noticed.

They emerged into a rather boxy, underground space that featured all the modern lines of a cave with the beauty of a minimum-security prison. "My newest invention," said Crowley with a weak smile, "it's called a Parking Garage."

Ezra, squinting into the haze of darkness, could make out the figure of a colossal machine. As he stepped further into the space, he realized—not without the requisite sense of horror—that he recognized it.

"Get in," said Crowley, who had swung himself gracefully into the carriage's lush interior.

Ezra stepped gingerly onto the kneecap of one of the thing's legs and sat to Crowley's left. Then Crowley pulled some sort of lever, and Mr. Bentley was crawling excitedly towards the exit ramp. "Now, I'm not going to ask what's going on," said Ezra as they emerged into the—now bruise-colored—daylight, "I just want to know WHAT'S GOING ON."

"You think," said Crowley, completing a three-point turn, "that I know?"

Ezra gripped the underside of the cushy seat as the carriage began to clip along at a fast cantor, outstripping their surroundings and exhaling spurts of steam with the force of a barking spider. "Yes," said Ezra, "I think you do."

The feeling had come upon Ezra suddenly, in the small openings in time where he wasn't bouncing almost out of his body in a mutant carriage of combination arachnid and canine heritage beneath a putridly indigo sky. There had been a girl with a bicycle…

"We're not going fast enough," Crowley shouted as they soared past the Royal Opera House.

Though Ezra was of the personal opinion that they had left 'fast' behind several dozen blocks ago, he was rather more focused on the slippery sensation in his stomach that always meant he had forgotten something.

The world outside the window was marbled and blurred. Ezra wasn't even sure if Mr. Bentley was still on the ground. They weren't bouncing as much, which should have been more reassuring than it actually was. Now, what had the girl said?

Ezra found his mind slipping into a funnel and everything was bent and awkward. A bird in the hand is worth a bicycle in a bush…Crowley was wearing those goggles and they were moving so fast so fast they should have caught fire. He will call on you this Thursday.

Be careful what you sign.

The carriage stopped so quickly it was as though it had been plucked out of time. Three strangers stood in front of them, and there had been, there were, windows on the carriage, but Ezra could hear them.

The one in the middle, the one with the debatable solidity and the anxious part in his hair stepped forward. "You must be Aziraphale."

Ezra, confused beyond measure, looked at Crowley. The latter blanched.

The stranger smiled. "Thank you, Crowley. I couldn't have done it without you."


	11. Chapter 11

The first time, Crowley hadn't believed him. The second time, he had thrown him out. It'd be a funny old world, he had mused, if he and Gabriel went around trusting each other.

Finding Azira—Fell, finding Fell, hadn't been much of a challenge. Human though he might be at present, Fell exuded an energy so pure that Crowley found himself drawn to it against all sense of self-preservation. And the funny thing was, Fell had come to _him_. He had walked right into it. It was too easy and too mean, even for Crowley.

But Crowley had said he would do it. And Crowley always kept his promises. Drawing up the contract, handing over the rights to the Plan back to Gabriel's side. True, Fell was the sole holder of the intellectual property, but that was in his human form. Back Upstairs, it would belong to Him, because sometimes Upstairs operated like Communist Russia. And Crowley would receive Divine Immunity and a release from his Hellish duties for an eternity on Earth.

Was it any surprise that blasted Gabriel would double-cross him? Of course, Crowley, you're more than welcome to stay on Earth. No, Crowley, don't worry about Lucifer. Yes, Crowley, Hastur and Ligur won't be bothering you any more. Oh, Crowley, did I mention that there's an Apocalypse on the way and you've given us just they key to start it? Angelic bastards.

Speaking of bastards, Aziraphale! Fell! Whatever! He was not going to be pleased. Crowley hadn't even known Aziraphale that well before his whole human experiment. Sure, they would nod at each other every couple centuries or so, and there was that one time they ran into each other at that fig place in Babylon, but he hadn't talked to him much until he was born into a body with a brain that possessed absolutely no recollection of Anthony J. Crowley, eating figs or otherwise.

And now here they were, looking at that completely socially inept trio of angel and demons that had—with his unwitting help—managed to jumpstart the end of the world, and Crowley was falling for the angel-man-thing who couldn't even begin to understand the extent of his demon-lawyer's betrayal. Perfect.

"I know you don't remember me, Aziraphale," Gabriel was saying, "but you're in good hands now."

Crowley glared. "What are you, an insurance advert?"

Ezra said, "What's that you've been calling me?"

Crowley patted Ezra's hand. "It's going to be okay."

Ezra sat up sharply and whirled around to face him. "You! What did he mean, he couldn't have done it without you? Done what? I don't know any of these people," he squinted, "wait, that's the Misters Hastur and Ligur, isn't it? What are they doing here? What do they want with me?"

Crowley opened his mouth to attempt to explain, but Fell continued, "This is about your debts, isn't it? You want me to pay your creditors! That's why you wanted to discuss contract payment later!"

"Something like that," muttered Crowley, "but you're not supposed to be here! I was trying to take you _away _from them, not bloody deliver you right _to_ them!"

Gabriel stalked towards the passenger seat of the carriage. "Crowley! You weren't honestly thinking about giving up your part of the bargain?"

"You gave up yours," Crowley growled.

He had been trying to move the carriage into reverse for the last several minutes, but it refused to move. Even the wind had stopped. Not simply dropped away, understand—completely stopped, as though that moment had been given the boon of stretching out eternally. Twigs, presumably propelled by the gust, were hanging in the sky, and Mr. Bentley was poised with one menacing front leg in the air as though anticipating an attack.

Ezra, who looked about as fed up as a man at the dawn of the Apocalypse possibly could, stepped out of the carriage before Crowley could stop him and marched straight towards the Angel Gabriel.

"You listen to me," he spat, as Crowley closed his eyes in dread, "I don't know who you are or what you want with Crowley, but you're not getting a _cent_ out of me!"

"Can't ya do somethin' about 'im," Hastur begged Gabriel, "not that I'd like another one of ya around or anythin', but he's just bloody annoyin' like this!"

Crowley threw caution to the frozen wind and stepped out of his beloved carriage. "No one can do a thing," he said, "unless it's Ezra himself."

The latter looked at him. "Crowley, you really do know these people, don't you?"

Fell's countenance had taken on the hazy and nigh-empty look that most humans get when they find themselves embroiled in situations far beyond their comprehension. But Crowley bent forward to look closely—which was quite unwise under the circumstances—and could see in his eyes the same solid blue irises that had manifested before they had…

"Yeah, I know them," said Crowley.

He took Ezra's hand, squeezed it. "I'm really sorry about this, angel."

Then it was as though nothing was there and that there wasn't there and Crowley didn't ever want to stop kissing him. And into that kiss he put every fiber of his damned and once-angelic self and he could feel Aziraphale waking up from that body, could feel the surge of divine energy building from his solar plexus.

Aziraphale broke it first. He looked at Crowley with a sadness that encompassed eons. "My dear boy," he said.


	12. Chapter 12

Aziraphale could hear the silence around them, the bounds of time having vacated the world. He gently uncurled his fingers from Crowley's grasp and said, "Hello, Gabriel. You've been well?"

Gabriel smiled. He looked like a runny egg. "I knew it was you under there."

A snort from Aziraphale's right. "You'd have to be a mollusk to miss that divinity," said Crowley, before firing up a grin and adding, "which is to say, I'm surprised. Well done, you."

"Crowley," Aziraphale hissed.

Ezra would have laughed. It would have been Aziraphale's voice, but thin and with the hint of a whistle. Of course he would have laughed. He wouldn't have understood the danger. It saddened the angel, knowing that he wasn't Ezra when he was himself.

"All good things must come to an end," Gabriel chided.

His words, uninspiring and cliché at the best of times, settled deeply into the pit of Aziraphale's stomach like a set of human feelings. Crowley didn't appear to be taking it any better, but he took a shuddery breath and said, "I don't care about the bloody Plan."

"S'not yours to care about," mocked Hastur, "you signed it over."

"To Upstairs! I don't know what _you're_ so happy about."

"We have the same goals," Ligur cut in, "the destruction of this planet."

Aziraphale wasn't exactly in favor of the prospect, but he knew that he had signed away any say in the matter when Crowley had drawn up that contract for him. Crowley! Had Aziraphale still been cursed—or was it blessed—with neural pathways, they would have lit up like a trail of bonfires. As it was, he settled on performing an instantaneous scan of his astral memory, which, of course, encompassed all of know history and more, besides. It was an activity he generally found calming, in the same way that some people count slowly to ten and others take deep breaths and still others develop a passion for eating their own hair. In this instance, however, his thoughts found a snag.

It was the cheekbones. It had to be. And there were so many things Aziraphale could have said at that moment, but being Aziraphale he settled on "I am not well-pleased with you, Crowley."

"Right," said Hastur, "turn 'em back. He's worse now."

Crowley's expression tripped somewhere in the territory of 'amused' and stumbled into 'vaguely horrified'. "Fell," he said, "this is what you're really like."

There was a silence that would ordinarily be referred to as 'stunned' had every concept of time not been thrown out the proverbial window, and then the reborn angel shouted, "Well, at least _I _don't take my tea with a shot of _whiskey_!"

"Other way 'round, angel," Crowley corrected automatically, with a twirl of his right hand.

"How _could_ you, Crowley?"

"Well, sometimes I find that the whiskey has a bit too much…well, whisk, and so—"

"You know very well that's not what I meant!"

"And what did you mean?"

"Everything!"

Another one of those silences, though this one was charged with the beginnings of divine wrath as Aziraphale spread his arms from his body to make his point, arching his back, looking for infinity. On anyone else, the gesture would have been comic. On Aziraphale, it was heartbreaking. But there was something else.

"I don't believe we have anything further to discuss," said Gabriel, though without the coldness one might have expected—he didn't go in for the icy villain cliché, though this was mainly because he didn't see himself as a villain.

"Wait," said Crowley, and he was actually smiling.

Gabriel raised an ill-groomed and strangely transient eyebrow. "Yes, serpent?"

"This…this is what he's really like."

Aziraphale turned towards him and made a face like a disappointed cabbage. "Don't help me."

Crowley nearly jumped. He pointed at Aziraphale. "See? He's sarcastic! He's _never _been sarcastic! I thought it was a Divine impossibility, like sun in London or a classy ice-cream cake, but there you go."

"What's your point?"

Ignoring Gabriel's imperious tone, Crowley allowed himself a full leap into the air. "I'm going to be able to eat sushi when it arrives in London two hundred years from now!"

"Crowley," warned Aziraphale, "I think it would be best if you stopped…well, existing at the moment, but I'll settle for no more talking."

"You idiot," wheezed Crowley, for he was now laughing, "it's never left!"

"_What_ are you on about?"

"The Plan!"

Gabriel looked a bit out of his depth, Ligur a tad more out of his, and Hastur was floating out there somewhere in the waves behind them.

Crowley shook his head. "You are all _completely _stupid. The Plan has never left Aziraphale's control. Don't you understand? Apocalypse, never!"

"That," Gabriel said, "is impossible. It is HIS plan, and as Aziraphale is HIS property, anything he owns belongs to HIM."

"Ah," said Crowley, "but he never left."

"_Who _never left, Crowley?"

Crowley spun around and grabbed a spluttering Aziraphale by the hand, alternating between vigorously shaking it and kissing it. "Ezra! _You_, you bloody little genius!"

"What?"

"Oh for Go—Sa—_somebody_'_s_ sake. You incarnated onto this planet in human form as one Ezra Fell, yes?"

"That's correct."

"And you had none of your angelic memories, correct?"

"Yes. I mean, no—I'm not sure what yes and no signify in this context—I didn't remember a thing."

"Even when you signed the contract?"

"Especially when I signed the contract."

Crowley grinned, finally deigning to release the angel's hand from his. "You see? Rights to the Ineffable Plan belong strictly to Ezra Fell, not Aziraphale. Tighter than a mechanical octopus, remember?"

"Yes, but Crowley—"

Gabriel cut Aziraphale off with a grunt so vague in its intention it could have meant anything, but all present nevertheless took it to signify his dissatisfaction. "We've been over this, demon. Once he returned to his full angelic state, property transfer would automatically take place, rendering "Ezra's"—here he used air quotes—claim void."

"Ah," said Crowley, "but Ezra never left!"

"You keep saying that," muttered Aziraphale, "I don't think it means what you think it means."

"But it does! Look at you! You can't honestly say that everything you do from now on won't be affected by your incarnation as Fell."

"That's ridiculous," scoffed Aziraphale, though as he said it he was trying _very _hard to keep his mind from replaying a certain series of events that had happened not long before on his living room floor.

"Like it or not, you're never going to return to your full angelic state. Not completely. And certainly not when you think you've been somebody else."

Aziraphale looked carefully at Crowley's face and thought he saw a shadow of pleading. But if he thought Aziraphale and Ezra were bound together, that one could never exist without the other, then that would mean—Crowley actually _wanted _to—

"Free will," said Aziraphale, letting the words march softly from his tongue.

Crowley smiled, and Ezra had never left. "The human part of me—the part that signed the contract—is still here."

"Rendering the Plan non-transferrable and unequivocally, irreversibly, indubitably yours."

"You really _are_ a lawyer."

"Hey, I invented paperwork."

Aziraphale laughed for the first time since the change, and it was new and the same and Crowley was letting the feelings back in. Gabriel's voice broke the mood. "Well," he said, "HE won't be very happy about this."

Oh, God. Oh! God. Aziraphale smiled apologetically, leaving Crowley to take up the expected scowl. Hastur and Ligur leered from their customary lurking positions. Gabriel looked steadily at each of them before shrugging. "There _is _that new café I've been meaning to try."

He takes several steps backwards and waves his hand.

It's windy again.

A branch hits Aziraphale in the face.

"That café," says Crowley, "closed twenty-three years ago."

Gabriel just flashes his best middle-manager smile and he and the other two are gone.

An angel and a demon are kissing in the shadow of an eight-legged carriage.

Author's Note: The shift to present tense in the last few sentences of this chapter is intentional. I wanted to show the divide between the lack of time and the rush of it, as well as convey the immediacy of their new beginning.

I'm so sorry that it took me so long to write this chapter, but I've been cheating on you with another fandom! I know, I have no dignity. Also, upon finishing the chapter before this one I thought, 'well, that's interesting. How the hell does it end?'

Epilogue—shmoopy and fluffy—will be up by this time tomorrow! Thank you so much for your patience, dedication, and kind words!


	13. Chapter 13

Epilogue

Wound up around a clockwork spring, the little jade dragonfly with the ruby eyes ejects a small needle from its backside and drops it into the groove of what Crowley is calling a 'record'. In a matter of moments, a chamber choir's worth of sound is streaming into the parlor through a wooden bullhorn and Crowley's clever fingers are winding themselves through Aziraphale's hair.

"What is this?"

Crowley smirks. "What is _what_, angel?"

Aziraphale darts his eye from corner to corner of the expansive room, taking it all in. "You know," he says, "_this_."

"Regina," Crowley says, as though it were obvious.

Aziraphale doesn't need to respond, because Crowley's already explaining. "It's a band. You know what a band is, right?"

The angel considers, and his face sparkles like a dusty diamond when he thinks he knows the answer. "Troubadours," he says happily, and for good measure he adds "traveling minstrels."

Crowley closes his eyes in exasperation.

"That's not what I meant," says Aziraphale, but his gentle tone makes it less of an admonishment.

"Minstrels?"

"No. This. What are we doing?"

"I believe," says Crowley, a slow grin sneaking across his features, "that we are listening to music."

"Crowley," sighs Aziraphale.

"Music," says Crowley, "usually leads to dancing."

He steadies his hand behind Aziraphale's back before dipping him down towards the ground, and he breathes lightly onto the shell of Aziraphale's ear—it's for show; breathing is recreational—and whispers, "and dancing leads to…"

He mouths a final word. Aziraphale has the decency to look shocked, but then he hums and sweeps Crowley across the floor in a jaunty gavotte, their legs knocking into each other rather more frequently than is fashionable, but this is to be expected. They sway rather awkwardly in front of the fireplace before Crowley takes the lead and spins his mostly-divine counterpart across the room at a speed only fitting for the demon who will, one day, invent the autobahn.

It shouldn't be surprising that it only takes two turns around the parlor for Aziraphale to lose his shirt and for Crowley's mouth to attach to the angel's neck like a delectable, plum-colored lamprey. "Nnnh," gasps Aziraphale, "wait!"

Crowley ceases his ministrations and raises his eyes to meet the angel's. Aziraphale looks more earnest than a kitten. "Crowley?"

"Yes?"

Aziraphale licks his lips and tilts his head to one side as though reconsidering his thought. Crowley raises his eyebrows and waits for something, for everything, for them to go back to what it was before when there was no 'them' and time didn't exist.

Aziraphale blinks once, twice. "What's sushi?"

Crowley's eyebrows return to their default position and he says, "I don't know and I don't care."

Ezra smiles.

They don't leave the flat for days.

Author's Note: Regina is, of course, Latin for Queen because where would Crowley be without Freddie Mercury?

I also neglected to point out earlier that Gabriel's human last name, Engelbert, contains the German word for angel.

And that wraps it up! Thanks again, everyone, you've all been amazing!


End file.
